Except that she wasn’t a killer.
Okay, so it wasn’t fact. Just a feeling. Intuition again. What Max had been doing all afternoon was attempting to slip beneath Angela’s defenses. Cameron hadn’t argued with her on that issue, not while she put on some of those lacy underthings, not when she zipped the schoolgirl pleated, red plaid skirt or knotted the red tie against her white blouse. Not when she smoothed the white thigh highs over her legs or stepped into her spiked heels. Not when she left her panties in the bureau drawer later just because it made her feel sexy to go without them. Cameron didn’t say anything at all.
Angela had chosen tonight’s outfit for Max’s first lesson. Men liked to think they were with a younger woman, liked to pretend they could attract a fresh nubile thing. The schoolgirl ensemble accentuated the illusion even if there were thirty-two years—no, thirty-three, now—worth of lines at Max’s eyes.
She troweled on extra makeup. It didn’t help. Still, when she’d stepped back from the mirror, the effect wasn’t bad.
It was then her late lamented husband stepped up to bat. “You’re acting like an infatuated teenager.”
“I’m acting like an amateur sleuth.” She liked the title.
“You told her we had sex on your office desk that first time.”
She pursed her lips. “I wanted her to know I’m not a prude.”
“That you aren’t, sweetheart. Tell me why you told her about the night I died.”
She froze, the lip liner in her tight fingers. “Hey, you told me to talk about it. So I did.”
“I told you to tell Julia.”
“So I told Angela as well. Big deal.” It was as if another person had done the telling, not her, someone who desperately needed to talk, who desperately needed a friend the way Max had once needed Sutter Cahill. With Julia, she’d done the picking and choosing on what to reveal, deciding what would best serve her. With Angela, the words had come of their own volition, as if a dam had suddenly crumbled beneath the weight of everything she’d been holding back.
“But why tell her?” he pushed.
Understanding? Expiation? Maybe plain old sisterhood?
“You told her they took you with them, that they raped you, beat you, then left you to die in an empty park, things you still have trouble talking about with me,” he went on.
Cameron’s killers. Three of them. She hadn’t even gotten to touch him one last time, to hold his still warm body in her arms, to kiss his forehead despite the blood and the hole they’d put there. They’d dragged her away before she could say good-bye.
Thank the Lord, Cameron hadn’t really left her. She would have died if he hadn’t come after her, hadn’t spoken to her in a soft ghostly voice until an early morning jogger found her lying just off the running path.
With a deep breath, she put a shaky hand to her lips as she applied liner. “I wanted to establish sympathy.”
He didn’t wait for her to get up before he slammed the next question into her. “Why did you tell her your uncle scared the crap out of you when you were thirteen with the way he looked at you?”
Because he had. At thirteen, she’d only known that look terrified her. At thirty-three, she knew exactly how much more it meant. “Angela told me her father was an asshole who molested her. I wanted her to believe we were sisters in a lot of ways, like she said.” She reached for her most daring shade of lipstick.
“But are you like her in every way?” Her heart pounded with his whispered words.
“What do you mean?”
“Your uncle, her father?”
Damn, she’d put a smear of red on her teeth. “Of course not.”
“Are you sure?”
“I don’t remember much about my childhood, but I’d remember that.” She told herself she wasn’t lying.
“But you remembered how he looked at you.”
“Yeah, but he never did anything about it.” Her teeth clenched on the words.
“But you don’t remember much of anything, not even the fight we had the night I died.”
Died . The second time he’d used that word. The worst was that hearing it and saying it didn’t seem to bother her as much as it once had, perhaps less even than last month, or last week. “I remember it was about you wanting kids. And me not being able to have them. Isn’t that what I told Julia?”
“It was about your refusing to adopt.”
What she remembered most was the moment he’d pulled out his cigarettes. She’d torn the pack from his fingers and shoved it down the garbage disposal, screaming about how the hell could he contemplate having kids when he couldn’t even quit smoking. That’s why he went to the 7-11 that night, for his last pack.
Because of what she’d done. She’d told Julia that. And Angela. Laid her guilt bare. To new acquaintances. But never to Cameron or Witt. Would Freud know why she’d done that?
Swallowing suddenly became a test. “What’s the point of this chat? And why now?”